*avaroa*, from *a* and *varo*, *I sweep*, a kind of painted pavements in use before the invention of mosaic work. The most celebrated was that at Pergamus, painted by Sefus, and exhibiting the appearance of crumbs, as if the floor had not been swept after dinner, whence, according to Pliny, the denomination. Perrault supposes them to have been a black kind of pavements of a spongy matter.